This is a pretty embarrassing misstep. The ABA is irrelevant in the IP / tech world, and this facepalm is a nice microcosm of why. (Wait, what is the ABA relevant to? Now that’s a hard question.) We geeks don’t like it when you dis science. Thanks anyway, ABA – maybe you should stick to having your judicial recommendations ignored.

Perhaps they should have booked some legal information technology specialist who could explain how we will all someday be able to appear via hologram in our adversary’s office with digital replicas of all relevant evidence and legal precedent at our fingertips. But that would be greeted by the audience with a yawn, because lawyers in actual practice know that the case still wouldn’t settle till the eve of trial.

Practicing law is primarily about bargaining; information is simply something that can be sought, used, and abused in a bargaining game. Much of the “rigorous intellectual discourse” peddled about legal information technology is, from the perspective of experienced lawyers, no more credible than listening to someone babble about creationism. Ben Stein, at least, has a sense of humor and doesn’t take himself too seriously.